Always on the lookout for fashion articles that can only have been written as a dare, Lost in Showbiz is pleased to draw your attention to a classic on Vogue.com. Even as Justin Bieber pulls out of his remaining tour dates with the express purpose of putting his soul on a more “sustainable” footing, his irrepressible creative spirit emerges in another format. To wit: a series of plain white T-shirts apparently designed in collaboration with stylist Karla Welch.

Like a lot of really important art, the creation of the plain white T-shirts required a total disregard for personal safety on the part of the artistes involved. “He was so fearless,” explains Welch of Bieber’s refusal to be terrified into using any of the plain white T-shirts already available in any of Earth’s shops. “He said: ‘I want T-shirts that are long,’ and they literally didn’t exist in the marketplace.”

Long T-shirts – I mean, it is like demanding someone provide you with working fairy wings, or making them construct one of Escher’s impossible designs. Fair play to the pair of them for not copping out, or being driven irretrievably past the point of sanity by the task.

Because they have only gone and done it. Somehow, Welch managed to reinvent this cotton jersey wheel, resulting in a series of seven T-shirts that are now on sale. Time for Bieber to chime in: “Karla and I have always pushed boundaries together, and this collaboration is a continuation of that.” Certainly, their historic debut leaves no seam of bullshit unmined. The T-shirts are described as “future vintage”, “genius” and something with which you are essentially charged with forming a relationship. “You have to commit to this T-shirt,” explains Karla.

Commit to it? I definitely plan to update a certain Hans Christian Andersen tale with it, and hope that Bieber’s quest for spiritual sustainability will not deny us a follow-up collection for too long.